by Ally Blake
Nadia nudged Sam’s foot with a toe. “Ryder filled me in some on what happened the other night. With your father.”
“He did?” Sam managed to look both relieved and like a puppy remembering it had been kicked.
“Are you okay?”
“Most of the time. Nothing the right pills and some darned expensive therapy don’t keep in check.” When Nadia merely stared back, Sam put both hands over hers. “Honestly, I’m fine. The other night was horrible. Just really mean and ugly. But it only made me sure that I’ve done the right thing in cutting him off. Which, of course, my more astute brother did millennia ago. And speaking of Ryder. He talked about Dad? Using actual words? That’s... I’m... Wow.”
Nadia shifted on her seat. “Ryder didn’t tell you we’d talked?”
Another eye roll. “Of course not. The man treats me like I’m made of glass. Though I get why. I do. What with his mum dying when he was so young, and our dad being...well, our dad, Ryder holds on crazy tight to the things that matter to him.”
Sam curled her hands back into her lap and sighed.
“Don’t tell Ryder this, but the only reason I’m going with a big white wedding is to give him the chance to give me away. I’d be happy to marry my guy right here, right now. But Ryder’s so unwavering in his effort to do right by me I thought nothing less than an official ceremony would give him permission to really let me go.”
Nadia nodded, even while she was only listening with half an ear. A warning bell had begun to buzz pretty insistently about a minute back when Sam had said Ryder holds on crazy tight to the things that matter to him.
It wasn’t as if she mattered to him, not in the way Sam meant. Even if it was natural for a proprietary feeling to come into play when you’d been naked with someone, when that someone had taken you to heaven and back on your kitchen table, in your shower, and slow, tender, deep, trembling, and weak up against the front door, they’d never talked about the chance of an extended run. Or even going for a second act. In fact once their clothes had come off they’d barely talked at all.
“So you and my brother...”
Nadia found Sam watching her, chin on her upturned palm, grin spread across her face. “Excuse me?”
“You were looking all dreamy and far away just now. I know that look. I see that look on Ben’s face each and every day.”
Nadia brought her now lukewarm beer to her mouth while she tried desperately to fashion a response.
“At least I hope it’s my brother you’re looking so moony about, considering the last time I saw the two of you, you had your tongues entwined.”
When Nadia near choked on her drink, she put it down carefully then sank her head into her hands, before sliding said hands through her shaggy hair. “What makes you think that was anything but a momentary lapse of reason?”
“I know my brother, Nadia. He’s the human version of the skyscrapers he builds—big, strong, invulnerable. This is the first time I’ve ever seen him so struck he can’t hide it and you, my sweet, did the striking.”
At that her palms began to sweat, her blood rang in her ears, and she wondered if this was what one of Sam’s panic attacks felt like. “Sammy Sam, I don’t meant to burst your bubble, but there is no your brother and me. Not in the way you mean.” She paused, knowing what she was about to say would complicate the simplest friendship of her life. “Melbourne was always a time-out for me, Sam. But that time’s run out. In the next few weeks the reps from the new Sky High show are flying out to Australia to see a small contingent of Australian dancers who’ve been asked to audition by invitation only. I’m one of those dancers.”
Sam’s face fell, for a second seeming to literally slip down over her bones. “Does Ryder know?”
Nadia swallowed. “I never would have agreed to take on your wedding party account if I wasn’t sure I’d be here until all your lessons are done.”
Sam’s next look was older than her twenty-four years. “That’s what’s my brother would call being deliberately obtuse.”
Nadia breathed out hard and fast. Then threw out her hands in surrender. “No, I don’t believe I’ve mentioned it to him. Or to any of my other students, for that matter.”
She sent Sam a pointed glance, which Sam returned in good measure. And rightly so. Nadia hadn’t spent a good many hours the evening before naked with any of her other students.
So why had she with Ryder? What made him so different from the dozen or so clients who’d made advances? Because there had been more. Plenty.
Ryder was beautiful to look at, sure, and unbelievably sexy in a prowling panther kind of way. But she was also fast gathering that he was ambitious and wry, complicated and intense, and while she’d gambled with more than her share of luck over the years he wasn’t big on second chances. Maybe that was it—he had the right amount of emotional baggage to draw her to him, like moths to the same flame.
Sam held up a hand at Nadia, halting her mid-thought, before hailing a waiter, ordering more beer, then saying, “I’m going to say one more thing and then that’s it, lips zipped shut. And that is Ryder would rather pull out his toenails with tweezers than talk about our father, though he will any time he knows I need to, which is only part of why he’s a great guy. Any woman would be lucky to have him in their life. And no matter what’s at the end of the road, for this moment in time, Nadia, that woman could be you.”
Nadia slid the red paper serviette from around her unused knife and breathed in deep, hoping Sam couldn’t see how shaky her breath was. Because in the quiet dark hours of night, she’d gone in circles thinking pretty much the same thing: that here and now didn’t have to have anything to do with the near future.
But it did. It always did. She knew better than anyone that past and future were so tightly knotted and profoundly intertwined, if one didn’t tread lightly they could strangle you.
“For as long as I can remember all I wanted to do was dance. Then a year ago I had it all—a job I loved, in a city filled with life and excitement and opportunity. And I threw it all away because—” Because of a guy, she’d been about to say. But no. She’d come to admit that had only been an excuse. Then why? Because she’d needed to take a breath? Because it had given her the perfect excuse to go running home to Mum? A little bit of all that. But also, “Because I didn’t know what I had till it was gone. I’ve realised since then that life doesn’t just happen, you choose it. And I choose dance. I’ll always choose dance.”
“Dancing means that much?”
“I wouldn’t know who I was without it.”
The waiter returned, condensation dripping down the brown glass of their beer bottles. When Nadia took the drink from his hand she realised she’d torn the red serviette to pieces.
“Man, I envy your passion.” Sam stared at the red mess, before bringing the drink to her mouth. “And enough said. As for the other, apart from the fact that you’ve just broken my heart a little bit, now we’ll have a couch to crash on if we ever get to Vegas, right?”
“For as long as you want.”
With that, Sam let out a big sigh then closed her eyes to the rare bout of dry sunshine. Relieved at having told Sam her plans, Nadia tried to do the same. But now that she’d told Sam, now she’d brought that world into this, it somehow made it real. Like in the stars real. And anticipation flowed through her veins like liquid ice till the tips of her fingers tingled as they did when she worked the ropes too long.
As this time she understood the gravity of the opportunity.
Her year away from professional dance had helped her grow up, and it had started the moment she’d knocked on her mother’s Toorak door, scoring nothing but a raised eyebrow.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise; it was exactly her family’s particular brand of solace. Twist an ankle? Suck it up. Bomb an audition? Get over it. And it certainly sh
ouldn’t have hurt so much. Rejection was as much a part of being a dancer as warming up. Still, it had felt like a punch right to her centre, and things had started becoming very clear.
What she wanted more than anything was to dance.
What she needed was to do so as far from her mother as humanly possible.
Necessity and desire burned within her and the reality check had just added fuel to the fire. Within the next six weeks she’d have the chance to have it all.
One wrong step and it could all go up in smoke.
* * *
Ryder pushed open the door to the dance studio, letting himself in.
After the day he’d had he was glad to be anywhere but on site. Accustomed to the politics of such a substantial and significant project, that day the trivialities had grated to the point he’d felt one problem away from abandoning the whole damn thing.
By contrast the studio was blissfully quiet. The lights dim. Slivers of cool moonlight shone through the bare windows painting patches of white on the scuffed wooden floor. He cast only a perfunctory glance at the beautiful beams above, as he was in pursuit of a different kind of therapy altogether.
It had been three days since that afternoon of delight in Nadia’s battered little apartment. Three long days since he’d left her at her door with a long kiss, her face soft with release. Then he’d gone home. Gone to work. And pretended it had been a perfectly normal encounter.
Unfortunately, pretending hadn’t made it so.
Normal for him meant no promises, no surprises, taking extreme care to leave no wreckage in his wake. Nadia turned him upside down and inside out until, even while he had no idea what he’d be walking into, or which version of the woman he’d encounter, he’d looked forward to Tuesday night more than anything else that week.
He dumped his gear on the moth-eaten old chair, and looked around. So where the hell was she? The eerie silence built inside him as he walked the wall of windows, anticipation and unrest mixing until his senses keened with every creak of an old floorboard, every shift of dust motes on the sultry air.
“Howdy,” Nadia’s voice twanged behind him.
Ryder spun on his heels to find her standing by the big old curtains; tiny curls that had escaped from her hair band framing her face, dark eyes a smudge, lush lips hooked into a smile. Her face and neck were dewy from exercise, the rest of her encased in a long-sleeved, cross-over-type top, a short black skirt, fishnet tights, and spiked high heels.
“Nadia,” he managed.
Her eyes flickered reproachfully over his suit. “How was work, Ace?”
“Incessant.” He’d spent the day battling unions and clients and staff and contractors and suppliers rather than doing any of the hands-on designing that his job was meant to be about. At least he’d thought so once upon a time. “Yours?”
“Hard, actually.” She rolled her shoulders and stretched out a hamstring to bring that home. “Care to see what I’ve been up to?”
The unsettling inside out and upside down feeling came swarming back, yet he found himself saying, “You bet.”
Without another word she whipped back the curtains at the corner of the room revealing...
“Holy mother of...” Ryder said, his feet propelling him forward as his eyes darted from runs of black ropes dripping from the beams above, over wafting swathes of red silk doing the same, to a sparkling silver hula hoop dangling six feet off the floor.
His eyes ran all the way up the heavy-duty wire wrapped about and bolted to the beams above. Architecturally inventive as he was, he was pretty sure he’d never look at a beam the same way again.
“You look a little freaked, my friend.”
Ryder flicked a glance to Nadia to find her watching him, her arms folded over her chest. Defensive. And comprehension began to trickle down his spine. So this was how she was going to play it after their afternoon together. His little dance teacher was throwing down the gauntlet.
Schooling his features into the very definition of impassive, Ryder offered up a half-smile. “Dare I ask what it’s all for?”
Nadia cocked a hip, all insouciance and grace. It was a heady combination. Especially since he now knew the curve of that hip, knew the taste of that dewy skin, the skill of that lush mouth, the light that shone from those guarded eyes when she was laid bare.
“How about I show you instead?” With that she unhooked her skirt, and nudged off her shoes, leaving her in the long-sleeved top, black bikini bottoms and fishnets. Holy hell.
With practised ease she slid fingerless leather gloves over her palms, snapping studs behind her wrists with an audible click that he felt right in his groin. A small voice inside his head told him to Run! A louder voice told him to stay the hell where he was, as he might just have found paradise.
With a few quick stretches, she breathed in, then out, ran the soles of her feet over a towel on the floor, stretched out her fingers, steadied her breath. Then she positioned herself beneath the ropes, taking care as she curled them about her wrists, tugging to—he hoped—check the tension. Then, with a quick glance over her shoulder, she said, “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
Her first smile, a glimmer of light in her eyes, she then lifted her feet off the ground and with deft rolls of her arms and flicks of rope behind her knees seemed to float up into the sky.
He’d been fully aware of the grace of her every movement before that moment. He’d danced at her side and in her arms. He’d been inside her and around her and beneath her and above, and been bewitched by the knowledge and control she had over her beautiful body.
But as she turned herself into and out of the grip of the shiny black rope, stopping only for her strong, lithe body to make the most insanely beautiful shapes, all he could think was: upside down and inside out.
No music rent the air as she continued her hypnotic routine; the only sounds the hot summer wind whipping against the window, the swish of the ropes as Nadia tumbled through the air, and the thunder of his heart as he stopped himself time and again from reaching out when he thought she might fall.
But she never even came close.
She knew exactly what she was doing.
She was a wonder.
And then she was falling, plummeting, the rope unwinding from around her.
Fear hurled into Ryder’s throat, until she planted a foot on the floor; her ponytail swishing across her neck as her body came to a halt. Her chest rising and falling. Tousled hair matted to her neck with perspiration. Eyes burning into his as if daring him to even try to think himself worthy of such a creature.
But for the first time in his life Ryder didn’t give a flying hoot if he was worthy. He was a mass of pure instinct. Of need and fear and hunger; all of it primal, uncoiling from deep down inside, reaching out with perfect aim.
Nadia twirled her hands back into the rope till her arms were stretched up straight. “What did you think?”
As if she weren’t fully aware blood was pumping so hard and fast through Ryder’s body he could barely think at all. “If that’s part two of the routine I’ve been sent here to learn,” he said, his rough voice echoing across the huge space, “then Sam can think again.”
Surprise flared in her dark eyes before Nadia laughed, the sound soft, husky.
Her fingers flexed, as if she was about to let go. But Ryder shook his head, infinitesimally, little more than a private wish. Then, after a long hot thick moment in which Ryder’s blood rushed like a river between his ears, she instead rolled the rope higher, trapping her hands further, the stretch revealing a sliver of skin between her top and pants.
When she tilted her chin, she might as well have said, Come and get it. He didn’t need to be asked twice.
Three long strides ate up the distance between them and then his hands were on her cheeks,
his mouth on hers. The ropes swung her away from him, but he followed, ravenous, already pushed beyond the edge of reason.
His kisses moved to her neck, her throat, and then he was on his knees, not caring what the dust and old floorboards would do to his suit trousers. He had a million suits. There was only one Nadia, strapped up for his pleasure. And hers.
When he gripped her hips, she arched into him, again revealing a sliver of that delicious hard belly. He ran a thumb across the pale crescent, marvelling in the way her skin tightened, her muscles twitched. He followed with his mouth, running a trail of kisses in the wake of his touch, the scent of her filling his nostrils.
He looked up to find her watching him. Waiting. Anticipation kicking at the corner of her mouth. Desire flaring thick and fast behind her eyes. And something else. Defiance. As if they were playing on her terms.
And something came over him, a deep-rooted need to tame, to possess, to show her who was boss.
To negate his father’s cavalier blood, Ryder had spent his entire life trying to be the most civilised man he knew. But this woman— One look, one cock of her hip, one tilt of her mouth, she simply stripped him bare.
Like a devil’s whisper, it filtered through the haze of desire that if he gave her an inch this woman could well tear him apart. But it was too late.
He nudged her feet apart with his knees. She resisted, instinct kicking in. Too bad.
It was his turn to lead.
Eyes on hers, he slowly, achingly slowly, rolled the waistline of her pants and stockings down. Her mouth slid open to drag in breaths that were harder to come by. She tried biting her bottom lip, to retain control, but when he felt the trembling, heard it in the escape of a moan, he knew it was a lost cause.
When her tights hit her knees, he slid his hands up the backs of her thighs, desire knotting his gut as her head dropped back, her knees gave way, and the only thing holding her up was the rope biting into her wrists.
When his hands reached her backside, he breathed her in, desire pressing him near to the brink of control. Then he took her in his mouth, licking, nibbling, nudging, sucking, as she rocked and pitched and writhed above him.
